WordPress development is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the barrier to entry is so low that nearly anybody can take a few PHP functions and extend the WordPress interface quite a bit. But to cultivate a successful and longstanding product you need to build with rhyme and reason, which is where much of the bad reputation comes in as beginner-level developers see more dollar signs and market cap numbers rather than flow and good system design.

Naturally the dollar signs and high market cap has attracted many high-level developers and we have seen "better" quality code come in, but there are so many mega products in the space that only minimally rely on WordPress API's and are then dominantly built on languages and in-house scripts that basically just sit on top of WordPress. I suppose there's something to be said about how open WordPress is that this is even possible, but it definitely adds a lot of disparity around the market and has created a race to see who's products integrates with the most WordPress products out there!

The new Gutenberg editor is the epitome of this trend, having made it into core and introducing its own APIs severed totally from all the other many APIs in WordPress. I enjoy developing Gutenberg Blocks and think it has a cool API, but it is too JavaScript heavy for my tastes and many of my customers disable it anyway.

It seems Gutenberg is slated to be the next WordPress as the developers ambitions behind it is to add full-site editing, so in a way it feels like WordPress is being treated as a host to this new thing called Gutenberg that is slowly growing inside of it until it no longer needs WordPress as its host to survive.

Maybe the answer to your article, which many software companies have done, is ride your product on WordPress as long as you can, and then like a phoenix rise out of the ashes and take your customers and their data with you.